If that's not your issue, ie: if you have Nitrates but the plants that are looking a bit pale, I'd suggest it's a deficiency of another nutrient. Potassium and Calcium are the most common, also Iron in new systems that have a pH above 8.0

Yes I've got excessive nitrates so yesterday I got more baby cos lettuces. Will monitor during the next week or so with water tests daily to see any reduction of nitrates.

Can I also reduce the amount and frequency of food I'm giving to my fish to control nitrates?

Also are you able to give me some advice on how to introduce those nutrients into the system?I.E - Names of some products you would recommend, where to purchase them and how much to introduce into the system.

I do have both bacteria colonies established but I'm not sure the amount or size of the two colonies in the system

I think I may have to back off amount of feedto my fish plus increase time between feeding, maybe two to three days, so the bacterias can have more time to convert and grow....would that be a sound practice?

If you conduct a salt treatment for a nitrite spike, how long do wait until you need to do a partial water change or do you just leave the salt cycle through the system?

Considering I have nitrates present I think I have a nutrient deficiency with my plants. I'm using Perth scheme water coz I don't have access to bore or rain water so my water is at 8.2 PHI suspect the deficiency is Iron...would that be a fair assumption?

With your Ammonia and Nitrites at 0.5 and 0.25 you don't need to worry about letting your bacteria grow; you're fully cycled, you just need more pants to take up the Nitrates. Like Damage says leafy ones. Feed less if the nitrate build up is a worry.

I think if you salt to 3ppt most plants are fine except strawberry, and I imagine you'd test for Nitrite and decrease salt with water changes once you're satisfied that the bacteria has caught up, could take a week or less in warm weather.

People here talk about Iron Chelate, but I don't know the names of products, I'm sure the ones available down there in Aus are mentioned in a few threads.

Always make sure tap water is de-gassed to get rid of chlorine before putting it in the system.

To protect fish from nitrites (1.0ppm or less) salt at 1ppt is sufficient as effective chloride to nitrite ratio is 10:1 according to most reputable sources. Here are some links to relevant articles and studies.

With your Ammonia and Nitrites at 0.5 and 0.25 you don't need to worry about letting your bacteria grow; you're fully cycled, you just need more pants to take up the Nitrates. Like Damage says leafy ones. Feed less if the nitrate build up is a worry.

I think if you salt to 3ppt most plants are fine except strawberry, and I imagine you'd test for Nitrite and decrease salt with water changes once you're satisfied that the bacteria has caught up, could take a week or less in warm weather.

People here talk about Iron Chelate, but I don't know the names of products, I'm sure the ones available down there in Aus are mentioned in a few threads.

Always make sure tap water is de-gassed to get rid of chlorine before putting it in the system.

hi guy.

no he isnt fully cycled, fully cycled is the point where the bacteria can keep up with the current feed rate with no lag as such.most people consider it to simply be when ammonia and nitrites are at 0.0ppm, which is a good indicator.... but if you up the feed rate, then you suddenly arent fully cycled again until the bacteria grow to cope with the new feed rate.

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